Knicks storm back from 29 down to top Spurs 107-106 in NBA Finals, largest comeback in series history
The New York Knicks walked off the Madison Square Garden floor on Wednesday night with a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs and a slice of league history: the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, a 29-point rally finished off in the final seconds by OG Anunoby. The result puts New York three wins from a championship, with the series lead now 3-1.
The night looked finished an hour earlier. The Spurs led by 29 at one stage and still by double digits deep into the third quarter, an arena half-empty in spirit, the visiting bench loose. Then New York turned the game on its head, Anunoby inbounded, crashed the offensive glass and tipped in the go-ahead bucket as the buzzer sounded, per France 24's account of the final sequence. A 29-point hole, the biggest the league has ever seen in a Finals, gone.
How it turned
The Spurs controlled pace, glass and the foul line through the first 28 minutes. They stretched the lead to 29 on the back of a transition attack that finished at a high percentage and a defence that funnelled the Knicks into contested pull-ups. New York's half-court offence looked stuck, its bench rotation short on creators, the Garden crowd drained.
The Knicks climbed back in with defence, not with hot shooting. They forced live-ball turnovers, bottled up the middle of the floor, and let San Antonio's free-throw volume do the rest. As the Spurs' advantage in transition dried up, New York's length began to tip 50/50 balls. The third quarter ended with the lead cut to 13, the fourth opened with a Knicks run that pulled it under five. From there it was a possession game.
The final play
With the score level and the clock inside a second, the inbounds went to Anunoby, who attacked the rim, missed the first look, crashed his own rebound and finished the tip at the horn, according to France 24's wire description. The Garden exploded. The Spurs, who had a timeout in hand, did not call it. The officials reviewed the play, the basket stood, and New York had stolen a game that had been theirs to lose.
What's actually at stake
A 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals is not quite a coronation, but it is close to one. Teams that take a 3-1 lead in the Finals have closed out the series at a historically overwhelming rate, and the Knicks will get a chance to do it in Game 5. For San Antonio, the loss is the cruelest kind: a team that controlled 70 percent of the game, lost the last 30, and now has to win three straight against a team that has just rediscovered its defensive identity. The Spurs' older core will also have to absorb a travel day and a hostile building in New York for two of the remaining three games, should the series get that far.
For New York, the win is more than a lead in a series. A franchise that has spent two decades searching for a Finals run of its own now sits one game from the title round's end, with Anunoby — a January acquisition that cost the Knicks a significant asset package — the unlikely closer on the defining possession of the series so far.
The counter-read
Pace, rebounding and free throws in the first three quarters are not flukes. San Antonio built a 29-point lead because its game plan worked, and its problem in the fourth was a combination of New York's defensive adjustments, missed free throws and a couple of late-clock errors that the Knicks punished. If the Spurs clean up the possession-by-possession decisions — particularly on the final inbounds — and replicate their first-half transition efficiency, the next game is a coin flip. A 3-1 lead in a Finals is historically decisive, but it is not technically over until the last buzzer.
This article was framed as a single-game wire event with structural stakes — a historic comeback, a 3-1 series lead and an unusual late-game tactical sequence — rather than a championship-declared piece, since the series has not yet concluded. The Spurs' first-half dominance and the contested nature of the final play are both given weight, in line with this publication's standard for two-sided sourcing on live sports.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/NBALive
- https://t.me/NBALive